


THE LUSIADS AS THE 
EPIC OF LOVE 


Address at Cornell University 
~ on April 28, 1909 
by 
JOAQUIM NABUCO 


Brazilian Ambassador 


oe 


. os 
Sige 

| 

| 


an 





MKT O MWe 


eheGey 





THE LUSIADS AS THE EPIC 
| OF LOVE 


Gentlemen of Cornell University: 

For the third time I appear before an American 
College as a Camonian Rhapsode; alas! not, like the 
Greek Rhapsodes, to repeat the poet’s own verses, but 
tc translate them into foreign prose, taking away much 
of his power. No doubt the highest part of Poetry is 
thought, communicable from man to man through any 
language, and therefore the Brstz and the In1ap remain 
the greatest of all works in whatever language they 
may be translated. But if the essence of poetry is 
thought, not sound, which is only a vehicle for it, the 
question of impressing thought is a very important 
one. The original verse, in the poet’s own language, 
has a direct grasp upon the memory and makes mind 
resound with it throughout life, while the prose transla- 
tion does not interest the auditive, the musical mech- 
anism of mind. 

The other night, at Vassar College, I made Camoens 
introduce himself as a love singer. To-night he will ap- 
peal to you as the Poet of Love; that is, you will see the 
lyric poet changing into the epic. I hope these 
Addresses on Camoens will call the attention of 
a few among the American students to one of the 
ereatest names of modern Literature and to the beauty 
and poetry of our language. Jam often asked to speak 
in Spanish, so general is the belief here that in Brazil 
we speak Spanish. The expression Spanish America is 


2 


used here for the whole of Latin America. . I have no 
objection to it in the old historical sense of the word 
Hispania, although we generally employ the word 
Iberia in that sense. But Portuguese is a very distinct 
language from Spanish, and was bound to have a dif- 
ferent literature. Both are transformations of Latin, 
with few signs of a different national formation be- 
tween the two, but the ear of the Peninsula peoples that 
divided into two Nations was somewhat different, and 
the differences introduced by it in their common Latin 
speech were sufficient to form languages of different 
resonance. 

There are words which are the exclusive flowers of 
a language and which by their constant use, as some 
trees show the kind of lands where they grow, reveal 
the character of the race speaking that language, or 
of the epoch when they come in full blossom. The 
difference between Portuguese and Spanish could not 
be better shown than by the predominance in Portu- 
guese of the word saudade and its premature death in 
Spanish. With reference to this word you should read 
the note of Prof. Henry R. Lang, of Yale University, 
in his book, CancionEIRO GALLEGO-CasTELHANO (pp. 199- 
201). 

The bulk of Portuguese, at the time of the founda- 
tion of the Monarchy, was the Galician dialect, that is, 
Latin as it was spoken in Galicia. Autonony under a 
French ruler, Henry of Burgundy, brought about in 
the new Lusitania a different national tendency, which 
local influences widened each day. Spanish shows the 
Arabic influence more than Portuguese, not perhaps so 
much in the vocabulary as in its guttural harshness. 
The greatest boast of the Portuguese language is 
expressed by Camoens, explaining Venus’s love for 





3 


the Portuguese by their similitude with her old 
Romans, mainly in their language, ‘‘which, when she 
thinks, seems to her with light corruption to be the 


Latin.’’ 


E na lingua na qual quando imagina 
Com pouca corrupeéao cré que é a Latina. 


After saying a word on the language, I will say one 
on the country. Small as Portugal was, her mark in 
history may be well compared to that of Spain, as dur- 
ing nearly a century the genius of navigation, the 
secret of the Ocean, was hers. There is no name in 
Portugal in the field of art to be opposed to Velasquez, 
or Murillo, or Goya. She has no Cathedrals to be 
compared to those of Burgos or Toledo. Nothing to 
rival the Alhambra. Yet if you put all that together 
in a seale of the balance, adding to it Don Quixote, and. 
put the Lustaps in the other, I doubt which would weigh 
more, just as if all ancient Art was weighed against the 
Intap, I believe Homer’s scale would remain im- 
~ movable. 

You know the Poet’s life. There is nothing of im- 
portance added to it since Longfellow’s sketch. His 
ancestors possessed a manor in Galicia, and to it is 
attached the legend of the bird called camdo, which 
would die of grief if it saw unfaithful the lady of the 
house, as he says in one of his love-verses. 


Experimentou-se algum’ hora 
Da ave, que chamam camio, 
Que se da casa onde mora 

Vé adultera a Senhora 

Morre de pura paixao .. . 


Let us hope that the bird which gave his name to the 
family justified the wronged lady before her husband 


4 


and that they took his name out of gratitude for him. 
But, one way or the other, the legend shows that love 
was an influence with the Camoens. With the poet it 
was a fatal influence, except that it fed him, so to say, 
from the cradle to do the great work of his life. Love 
was the cause of his exile from Lisbon, of his relega- 
tion to Africa, of his imprisonment, of his engagement 
for India, of all his adversities, but the cause also of 
his glory. It kept him in a kind of useless life, which 
was, however, the only one fit to produce his immortal 
masterpiece. ‘There is nothing sure about his loves, 
except that he was always unfortunate in them and that 
he never repented of loving. There is a tendency to 
reduce them all to one, but we really do not know how 
many they were, nor the difference of intensity and 
earnestness between them. No one can say if his 
references are to the same person, nor who she was. 
No doubt one love which he depicts as a life af- 
fair, writing in his maturity, eclipses the others, but 
he might have forgotten. Worst of all, it is impossi- 
ble to identify the young lady to whom his most beau- 
tiful and saddest complaints went. Several young 
women of his time have their champions, although 
none appears herself as a postulant for glory. 

Of all rival claims that is the most delicate for one 
to arbitrate upon, as there is the risk of robbing a 
woman of her immortality. I do not know if it is quite 
safe to limit the selection to the ladies of the Court 
named Catherina, although Catherina, whoever she 
was, may remain her name for history, her literary 
pseudonym. ‘There is no allusion by the hand of 
Camoens himself to any Catherina; the name was 
brought out before posterity long after his death, and 
comes from no document whose authenticity one could 


5 


really ascertain. All that can be said is that he wrote 
verses to one Catherina, unless he wrote them to two. 
The Queen being a Catherina, the young Catherinas . 
certainly abounded in the Court. 

In his youth and prime Camoens was a constant 
writer of love-verses, and only the misfortunes of his 
hfe, caused probably by the daring of his love ambi- 
tions, would make him soar so much higher. Some in- 
discretion in his love affairs caused his exile from the 
Royal Court, and, after it, his enlistment to fight the 
Moors in Africa, where he was wounded and lost one 
of his eyes. This wopnd marks an epoch for the Por- 
tuguese literature. Ais hopes as a general courtier 
were dispelled by it, his pride as a lover was withered, 
and he felt at the mercy of anyone who looked at his 


disfigured face. He calls himself ‘‘Polyphemus,’’ 


while his beloved one is ‘‘Galatea.’’ It makes all dif- 
ference in love if one receives a deformity. 
It is impossible not to notice the strange means that 


‘Fate employs to bring the Poets to give their best, as 


fortune does not bring forth the same kind of work 
as misfortune, and there is nothing more pathetic than 
the soaring above circumstances, by which genius in- 
sists in serving his inspiration. In fact, the great poet, 
as a human creator, leads a double and contrary life: 
enjoying real bliss in the companionship of his creat- 
ures during his greatest personal sorrows, and suffer- 
ing agonies with them during his own raptures. With- 
out Milton’s blindness his Parapism would have been a 
very different composition, and without Camoens’ dis- 
figurement his poetical work would probably have all 
been of the personal kind. It was that wound that 
made him give up in despair love, court life, Lisbon, 
Portugal, and to open his sail in the direction of the 


6 


Lustaps. Nearly all great men would have preferred 
power, honors, success in life, the pleasures of wealth, 
to everlasting fame, if left to themselves. It is fate 
that, for their sake, either persecutes them from the 
outside, or turns them into their own persecutors. I 
do not know how it will be henceforth. Among the 
many new departures brought about in our times, there 
is the creation of a literary profession. What was be- 
fore a vocation is now a lucrative career. Only a very 
high conscience will stop a dealer on the way to for- 
tune from taking advantage of the public favor and 
from watering his inspiration. I am afraid that opu- 
lence will upset all the noble traditions of a craft, 
which misfortune has played so large a part in purify- 
ing and subliming. It is true that the cycle of Litera- 
ture seems to be already closed, the goal of the human 
ideal having been attained in it, as well as in Painting, 
Sculpture, Architecture, Music and Religion. 

During years and years Camoens was a Petrarea, 
finding in his own feelings an endless source of poetry. 
He grew a poet of the highest order, drawing only 
upon his loves, until he wrote that inimitable Cancao 
(Canzone) the eleventh, which of all his lyrie poems I 
would like to read to you for you to understand better 
how and why love had the greatest part in the inspira- 
tion of the Lustaps. It is such a strain of harmony as 
rarely came from the heart of a poet, passing in review 
his life, all given to love, and all spent in false hopes 
and wasted affections. I did not bring it, because there 
would be no time during this address for you to forget 
the man and follow serenely the evolution of the poet. 

In despair of finding protection and good-will around 
him, Camoens, to save himself from the prison where 
he was confined, enlisted for military service in India 


7 


and left Portugal in the spring of 1553. It was a long 
voyage of about six months, much exposed to ship- 
wreck, and to fatal diseases. During that voyage he 
gathered the inspiration of the Lustaps; not, probably, 
that he then had the conception of the Poem, but that 
ke conceived the part which the sea and the ship-life 
will play in it. Then, in India, the voyage of Vasco da 
Gama, who opened those seas, grows on him and be- 
eomes the tie of the whole composition. Its aim is 
to celebrate the doings of the Lustaps, the progeny of 
Lusus, son of Bacchus. When he was shipwrecked, at the 
mouth of the Mekong, between 1559 and 1560, his Poem 
was as good as complete. There is no reason for dis- 
missing the legend that he worked on it during his 
stay at Macao in China. The filial piety of the Portu- 
gese-speaking races will forever remain attached to 
that far-Eastern shrine. He may have added to the 
Poem during his stay in Mozambique, in 1567, and until 
its publication; but the time that the inspiration of his 
work lasted, cannot have been so long as his stay in 
India. It is a law of genius that the same inspiration 
cannot remain unbroken for many years, much less for 
a whole life. 


The three principal factors in the composition of the 
Lusraps are the poet’s life-habit of love, his really ex- 
traordinary stores of classic knowledge, and his na- 
tional ambition. There is a tradition that, either in 
Sofala or Mozambique, Camoens woke up a morning in 
great joy, saying he would write a great song, as if the 
idea and the plan of the Lusraps had been revealed to 
him. I can well believe in this eureka the moment 
that the national ambition struck the immense material 
he had accumulated and the fountain of poetry he had 


8 


in his mind. That morning the personal phase of the 
poet ended. Art turned love, which had been for him 
a personal obsession, into a divine sense; converted 
the poisonous blade, with which he only tortured him- 
self, into the chisel, that would carve the gational 
Poem. 

I commented at Yale University on six great impres- 
sions of the Lustaps: country worship; the poetry of 
the sea; mythology; the age of discovery; the spirit of 
the Renaissance, and, lastly, the law of the greatest 
effort in life. I reserved to present it at some other 
time, which happens to be now, as the poem of love, 
and I hope to have still an occasion, in my wanderings 
as its propagandist, to turn to the hght other of its most 
brilliant facets. Indeed, if you study the Lustaps, you 
will see that two parallel chains run through it: there 
is the patriotic chain and the love chain, each with its 
distinct summits, such as, for the first: the Invocation 
to Dom Sebastian, the battle of Ourique, the battle of 
Aljubarrota, Dom Manoel’s dream, the departure of 
Vasco da Gama from Belem, the doubling of the Cape 
of Good Hope, to speak only of the first Cantos, and as 
for the love chain, those truly radiant summits: Venus 
before Jupiter in the first Canto, Ignez de Castro in 
the third, Adamastor in the fifth, the forge of Cupid 
and the Isle of Love in the ninth. 

You will excuse me for translating myself what I will 
read to you. There are several translations of 
Camoens in English verse, but in all of them there 
is a strong collaboration of the translator with him, 
and I like him better alone. It is invaluable the service 
they have done for him, they make many read him who 
would not have read him in English prose, and I owe 
much to them in my own translations, but I think the 


2 


true poetry of the Lusraps, when deprived of its music, 
appears better in foreign prose. 


To show that the Lustaps is the poem of Love, it is 
enough to say that it is the poem of Venus. Camoens 
did not fear the A/neid, and all who compare his Venus 
with that of Vergil will agree that the question: Which 
of the Venuses is the most beautiful? is an insoluble 
problem in literature, as it is in Statuary or Painting. 
The pictures of Venus by Camoens are the pendant in 
poetry of the frescoes of Venus in the Farnesina by 
Raphael. With her, all throughout the poem, the power 
of love is made to appear the dominant force of the 
Universe. 

After the incomparable picture of Venus in the sec- 
ond Canto, the great love page of the Lustaps is the 
tale of Ignez de Castro. The story of Ignez de Castro, 
ealled, from her long neck, Collo de Garca, Heron’s Neck, 
is widely known. She was a young dame at the service of 
Dona Constanea, the wife of Prince Dom Pedro, heir to 
King Affonso IV. The Princess died shortly after her 
marriage and for ten years Dom Pedro and Inez thought 
only of enjoying their love in the greatest privacy. The 
possibility of her ascending the throne together with 
his son incensed the old King against her and rival 
courtiers, by his order or with his consent, killed her 
in Coimbra in the absence of her lover. The tradition 
of the time is that they had been secretly married. A 
few years after her death, the Prince, coming to the 
throne, took a°most cruel vengeance on those of her 
murderers who could not escape him, and had her re- 
mains removed from Coimbra and given a royal tomb 
at the Monastery of Alcobaca, where she lies by his 
side. The legend sung by Camoens is that he crowned 


IO 


her in death and that her exhumed body received the 
vasselage of the nobility and the people seated by his 
side in all the pomp of royalty. The whole history of 
Royalty does not record a similar coronation. 

I will read you the episode of Ignez de Castro, only 
being sorry that you cannot hear it in the melodious 
and pathetic stanzas of Camoens. 


“That prosperous victory once over, Affonso returned to his own 
realm to enjoy peace with so much glory as he had won in the 
hard fought war, when occurred the sad case, worthy its fame; 
which lifts up the dead from their tombs, of the frail and unhappy 
maid, who was made a Queen after her death. 

“Thou alone, pure love, with that crude force which binds to its 
will every human heart, were the cause of her being murdered, as if she 
were an enemy of thine. If it is said, cruel love, that thy thirst is 
not even quenched with the saddest tears, it is because, harsh tyrant, 
thou wishest thy altars bathed with human blood. 

“Thou wert resting, fair Ignez, in perfect quiet, enjoying the sweet 
fruit of thy youth, in that gay and blind delusion of the soul, which 
Fortune does not allow to last, there in the never forgotten meadows 
of the Mondego, never dry of the tears of thy lovely eyes, teaching 
the hills and the shrubs the name thou hadst engraved in thy 
breast. ; 

“Therein answered thee the remembrances which always dwelt in 
the soul of thy Prince, and which ever brought thee ‘back to his 
eyes, when apart from thy fair ones: by night in pleasant lying 
dreams, by day, in thoughts, that flew away; but all that he dreamt 
or saw were memories of your common happiness. 

“He refuses the much desired nuptials of other fair Ladies and 
Princesses, as thou, pure Love, scornest everything when a suave 
mien captivates thee. Seeing those enamoured whims, the grave 
old father who respects the murmuring of his people and the 
freedom of his son who will not marry, 

“Determines to take Ignez away from the. world to take from 
her his enchained son, believing that only the blood of an unworthy 
death could extinguish the burning fire of his firm love. What mad- 
ness let the fine sword, which had sustained the whole weight of 
the Moorish fury, be raised against a feeble and delicate woman! 

“The horrible hangmen were bringing her before the King, already 
moved to compassion, but the people with false and ferocious reasons 


II 


persuaded him again to the foul murder, when she began to en- 
treat the cruel grandfather, with sad and pitiful words inspired by 
the regret and remembrance of her Prince and of their little 
children whom she had to forsake, which grieved her more than 
death itself. 

“Raising her tearful eyes to the crystalline skies, as her hands 
were being tied by the hard and pitiless Ministers, and then bringing 
them down upon her children so dear and so sweet, whose fate as 
orphans dismayed her, she thus addressed the King: 

“Tf already wild beasts, whose minds nature has made so cruel 
from birth, and birds of prey, only intent on aerial rapine, have 
shown so tender feelings towards little children, as with the mother 
of Ninus and the twin founders of Rome; 

“Thou who hast the features and the heart of a man, if it is of a 
man to murder a feeble and defenseless girl, only for having sub- 
dued the heart of him who succeeded in winning her, respect these 
little children, since thou dost not stop before her own dark death; 
let thyself be moved by compai tion of me and of them, since it does 
not move thee my being innocent. 

“And if, overcoming the Moorish resistance, thou knowest how to 
deal death by iron and fire, learn also how to deal life by clemency, to 
one who did not commit any fault to forfeit it. Still if my innocence 
deserves so much from thee, place me in a perpetual and wretched 
exile, in cold Scythia or in burning Lyberia, where I may ever live 
in tears. 

“Place me where all ferocity would await me, amidst lions and 
tigers, and I will see if I can find in them the pity I did not find 
in human breasts. There with intrinsic love, and with all my 
will put in him for whom I die, I will rear up these relics of him, 
which you saw here, as a relief for the lonely mother.” 

“The benign King wished to pardon, moved as he was ‘by words 
that pierced him; but the stubborn people and her fate did not 
forgive her. Holding such a deed to be right, they drew their 
swords of fine steel. O butcherly hearts, how fierce you show your- 
selves against a lady, you knights! 

“As against the lovely maiden Polyxena, the last solace of 
her aged mother, the cruel Pyrrhus arms himself with his sword, 
because the shade of Achilles condemns her, and she, as the patient 
and sweet lamb, offers herself to the sacrifice, resting her eyes, 
which calm the air around, upon her unhappy mother, mad with 
grief. 

“Thus against Ignez the brute murderers, bathing their blades 
in the neck of alabaster which sustained the works with which 
Love killed with love him who later will make her a Queen, and 


12 


tinging with blood the white flowers she had watered with her 
tears, glowed with fury, not dreaming of the future avengement. 

“Well mightest thou, O Sun, have diverted that day thy rays from 
their eyes, as thou didst from the dire table of Thyestes, when he 
ate his own children through the hand of Atreus. You, concave 
valleys, that could hear the last sounds from her cold mouth, 
you echoed for long spaces the name of her Pedro. 

“So as the candid and lovely daisy, cut before time, loses its per- 
fume and its hues, spoiled by the heedless hand of the maid who 
had it in her wreath, so lies dead the pale young damsel, the roses 
of her cheek all faded, her white live color gone with her sweet 
life. 

“Weeping, the daughters of the Mondego, long remembered the 
sombre death and, as an eternal memorial, converted the wept tears 
into a pure fountain. They gave it the name, which still lasts, of 
the loves of Ignez spent on its banks. See what a fresh spring bathes 
the flowers! Its waters are tears and its name Love.” 


This is the end of the story of Ignez de Castro. Now 
the two stanzas in which the Poet sketches the reign 
of her husband, called Dom Pedro o Cri, Dom Pedro- 
the-Hard. The death of [gnez traced out his mission as 
that of an exterminator of crime. 


“Not much time elapsed before Pedro wreaked the vengeance of 
his mortal wounds, since he fell upon the fugitive murderers as soon 
as he took the reins of power. They were surrendered to him by 
another Pedro, most cruel, as the two had no pity for human life 
and made between them the dire and unjust compact which Augustus 
made with Lepidus and Anthony. 

“This one was rigorous chastiser of robberies, of murders and of 
adulteries; his most certain solace was to commit cruelties in his 
wrath against the bad ones, while, in his justice, keeping cities free 
from the oppression of the powerful lords. He gave death to more 
robbers than wandering Alcides and Theseus.”’ 


There are not among the royal tombs in Europe any 
two linked together by such strong tie of poetry as 
the twin ones, of Dom Pedro, called the Hard, and the 
sweet posthumous Queen, Dona Ignez de Castro, at 
Alcobaca. Nor is there a more poetical spot than the 


a 


NS 


Quinta das Lagrimas, in Coimbra, the Quinta of Tears, 
with its stately trees and its waters, consecrated to the 
imperishable legend of the loves of Ignez. 

You all have heard of the greatest creation of 
Camoens in the Lustaps, the huge and ugly giant who 
had the guard of the Cape of Storms. In a book of 
1803, Clarke’s Procress or Maritime Discovery, a true 
monument to the Portuguese achievements, there is a 
frontispiece plate entitled the Spectre of the Cape, 
which is a worthy illustration of the episode of Ada- 
mastor. A gigantic dark cloud hangs over the Cape 
tableland, the storm flashes in the East, Vasco da 
Gama’s ship, with her foresail torn to pieces, plunges 
on a quaking sea. There is all around a display of 
the furies of Nature that corresponds to the verses: 
‘What threat from Heaven or what secret does this cli- 
mate and this sea present to us that appears mightier 
even than tempest?”’ 


Que ameaco divino ou que segredo 


Este clima e este mar nos apresenta 
Que mor cousa parece que tormenta? 


What is characteristic of Camoens is that while he 


makes of Adamastor a horrid evocation, with ‘‘a 


frowning visage, a squalid beard, deep-sunk eyes, an 
awful posture, the colour pale and earthy, the crispy 
hair loaded with clay, the mouth black and the teeth 
deep yellow,’’ and while he personifies in him the blind 
and relentless forces that opposed the advance of man 
on sea, he gives him the tenderest heart that any lover 
ever had. Even in his terrifying prophecies the giant 
shows himself sensible to the woes of love, as in his 
touching picture of the death of Sepulveda and of his 
beautiful young wife in the sands of Africa. The part 


14 


he is made to play, of barring the sea gate of the Hast, 
does not leave so deep impression on us as the tale of 
his love, upon which even eternity seems to have no 
power. Poetry for Camoens, if not limited to love, was 
always convertible into love, at its higher power. 

Modern literature has added no myth but this one 
to the grand series of Homer and Hesiod. Adamastor 
is, aS Ignez de Castro, one of the triumphs of love in 
the Lustaps. I will translate the narrative which the 
giant makes of his metamorphosis, for you to say if 
ancient Poetry left a finer creation than this. Truly 
the age capable of adding to the old Mythology a myth 
that would have enriched it, richly deserves the name of 
Renaissance. 


“T am that hidden and great Cape which you named of Tempests, 
never known to Ptolemy, Pomponius, Strabo, Pliny, nor to any of 
those who passed. . . . Here I end all the African coast on this 
my never seen promontory, which extends towards the Antarctic 
Pole, whom your presumption now so much offends. 

“T was one of the fiercest sons of Earth, like Enceladus, ADgeus 
and the Centiman; my name was Adamastor, and I took part in the 
war against him that hurls Vulcan’s bolts; not that I piled hill 
upon hill, but, conquering the waves of the ocean, I was Captain of 
the sea, where wandered the fleet of Neptune, which I was pursuing. 

“Tove for the noble spouse of Peleus led me to undertake such 
great enterprise. I scorned all the goddesses of Heaven only to 
love the princess of the waters. One day I saw her with the 
daughters of Nereus come out all bare on the shore and at once my 
will was so enslaved that even now I do not feel anything that I 
long so much for. 

“As it would be impossible to obtain her through the ugly huge- 
ness of my face, I determined to take her by arms and I told Doris 
of my intent. The Goddess in dread speaks to her for me, but she 
with an honest and candid laughter replied: ‘What love of a Nymph 
would be enough to bear that of a giant?” 

“ ‘Still to free the ocean from so much war, I will seek a way to 
excuse my honour and to avoid the harm.’ The messenger brought 
me that answer, and, as the lover’s blindness is great, I would not 


15 


see the snare and my bosom was filled with abundance of raptures 
and hopes. | 

“Fooled, renouncing already war, one night promised by Doris, I 
saw at a distance the beautiful form of the white Thetis, alone un- 
robed. Like mad, I run from afar, opening my arms to her who was 
the life of this body, and I begin to kiss her lovely eyes, her cheeks 
and her hair. 

“Oh, from humiliation I hardly can say more. Thinking I had in 
my arms the loved one, I found myself embracing a rugged moun- 
tain of the harshest wood. Standing, face to face, before a stone 
which I clasped for the angelic figure, [ remained not a man, but 
deaf and motionless, and close to a rock, another rock. 

“Oh, Nymph the most fair of the ocean, since my presence does 
not please thee, what would it cost to keep me in this deceit, were 
it mountain, cloud, dream or nought? Raging and well nigh insane 
from the grief and the shame suffered there, I left in search of 
another world where none would scoff at my tears and my despair. 

“Meanwhile my brethren were vanquished and in extremest 
misery placed, some, for the greater surety of the Gods, lying »e- 
neath various superposed mountains, and, as against Heaven hands 
are of no avail, I began, while weeping my misfortune, to receive 
from an enemy Fate the penalty for my audacity. 

“My flesh is converted into solid earth, my bones into rocks, and 
these limbs, which thou seest, and this form were extended along 
these long waters; at last, my enormous stature was changed by the 
Gods into this remote Cape and, to double my woes, Thetis is 
surrounding me with her waves.” (V, 50-59.) 


It is with a full hand that he scatters love in his 
poetry. This touch, for instance, in the description of 
a storm: 


“The alcyon birds raised their melancholy song near the wild 
coast, remembering their own fate caused by the furious waves; 
the enamoured Dolphins entered the sea caverns for shelter against 
the fierce winds, which do not let them remain secure even in the 
geen...) (VI, 77.) 


“AS haleyoneas aves triste canto 
Juncto da costa brava levantaram, 
Lembrando-se de seu passado pranto, 
Que as furiosas aguas lhe causaram. 
Os delphins namorados entretanto 


16 


La nas covas maritimas entraram, 
Fugindo 4 tempestade, e ventos duros, 
Que nem no fundo os deixa estar seguros.” 


When Venus sees from her morning star the 
danger of her favorite crew, she at once bids her 
Nymphs go and conquer the winds. 


“And so it was done, for as soon as the winds come into their 
sight, the strength with which they were fighting fails them and 
surrendering they obey. It seems that their hands and feet were 
tied by tresses that dim the light.” 


And the poet tells us the sweet reproaches of Orithya 
‘‘the most beautiful’’ to Boreas: 


“Do not believe, wild Boreas, that I believe thou ever felt for me 
a constant love, as sweetness is the surest array of love and fury 
does not suit a true lover. If thou dost not put at once a rein to 
so much insanity, do not hope me henceforth to love you, but only 
to fear you, as with thee love is turned into fright.” 
Copy Lusiads 6°, Canto LXXXIX. 


“Nao creias, fero Boreas, que te creio 

Que me tiveste munca amor constante; 
Que brandura é de amor mais certo arreio, 
E nao convem furor a firme amante: 

Se ja nao poes a tanta insania freio, 

Nao esperes de mi d’aqui em diante, 

Que possa mais amar-te, mas temer-te; 

Que amor comtigo em médo se converte.” 


I will only mention another intervention of Venus, 
when she and the nymphs put their breasts in front of 
the Portuguese ships to save them from running to 
certain destruction. I said at Yale that Camoens con- 
verted Gama’s log-book into poetry. In this case he 
made use of an incident related in the Roteiro of Vasco 
da Gama that, his ship being reluctant to turn round, 
when he ordered the dropping again of the anchor, the 


T7 


native pilots threw themselves overboard for fear that 
their planned treachery had been discovered. 
Everything he touches becomes poetry because of 
that ray of love. Vasco da Gama arrives in Melinde on 
an Kaster Sunday. Here it is how he dates the event: 


“It was at the joyful time when the Phobeian light was entering 
the ravisher of Europa and began to illumine both its horns, while 
Flora poured forth that of Amalthea.” 


That is the spring with its sun and its flowers. 


“The speedy sun, turning round the sky, was again renewing the 
memory of the day in which He to whom everything is subject put 
his seal to all he had done.” 


That is the Resurrection. 

Now the description of Cupid’s love forge in the I[dal- 
ian mountains. Camoens is really a combination of 
two souls: he is a Greek poet, as well as a modern one. 
Cupid’s forge is worth the Greek imagination in all its 
freshness. Here is the new Camonian myth: 


“She (Venus) arrays her chariot with the birds (the swans) who 
celebrate in life their own exequies and with those (the doves) 
into which Peristera was changed while gathering daisies. : 
Around the departed goddess sound in the air kisses of love, but, 
where she passes with a soft gesture she makes serene the skies and 
the winds. 

“She already bends her chariot over the Idalian mountains, 
where her archer son was assembling many others to make a 
famous expedition against the rebel world to mend great. errors 
being committed there by people who love things which were given 
to man, not for love, but for use. 

“He saw Acteon so austere in the chase, so blind with its brutal 
and insane joys, that, to follow a fierce ugly beast, he flies all 
company and the beautiful human form, and as a chastisement, 
both sweet and severe, Cupid wishes to show to him the loveliness 
of Diana. Let him beware not to be devoured by those same 
hounds he now loves! 


18 


“He looks to the highest of the world; none thinks of the public 
welfare; their love is all for themselves and those for whom Phil- 
autia (self-love) teaches them to have regard; he sees those who 
frequent the royal palaces sell for good and sound doctrine only 
adulation, which does not consent that the young growing corn 
(the young King Dom Sebastiam) should be winnowed. 

“He sees that those who owe divine love to poverty and charity 
to the people, only love power and riches, simulating justice and 
integrity;they turn ugly tyranny into right and call asperity sever- 
ity. Laws are enacted in favour of the King, and only perish 
those in favour of the people. 

“He sees, in fine, that none loves what he ought to love, but only 
what he wrongly wishes. He does not think the punishment should 
be any longer delayed, but that it must come hard and just, and 
summons therefore his Ministers to take a sufficient army for the 
fights he expects to have with the ill-governed race, who will not 
show obedience to him. 

“Many of these flying boys are engaged in different works, some 
sharpening penetrating irons, others thinning arrow stems; and,. 
while working, they sing of love, modulating in verse different epi- 
sodes, with a sonorous and well adjusted melody, the lay sweet and 
the song angelical. 

“In the immortal furnaces where they were forging the piercing 
points of their arrows, instead of wood, hearts were burning, many 
of the human vitals still palpitating; the waters, where they tem- 
pered the iron, were tears of unhappy lovers; the vivid flame, the 
never dying fire, was only desire that burns, yet not consumes.” 


And in four stanzas more he describes the effects 
produced among the lowest and the highest of mankind 
by the shots of the little army of Cupid’s ‘‘ill-trained 
boys’’ and the description of Love’s workshop con- 
tinues until Venus alights from her chariot, in the 
stanza 36 of the ninth Canto. 

This stanza could be given to you in Portuguese as 
a taste of the music of the language, and of the Poet’s 
sonority. I do not think there are many others in the 
Poem that show the qualities of Portuguese to greater 
advantage. Iwill giveitin parts. I will read the first 
four verses, not surpassed in any language for their 
rhythm, and which form a most ideal picture. 


rg 


Mas ja no verde prado o carro leve 
Punham os brancos cysnes mansamente, 
E Dione, que as rosas entre a neve 

No rosto traz, descia diligente. 


“Already in the green meadows the white swans softly depose the 
light chariot, and Dione, in whose face roses blossom amid snow, 
promptly alights.” 


And the Poem ends with that wonderful apotheosis 
of Love, the Isle of Love, which Venus makes appear 
before the Portuguese ships and where herself and the 
Nymphs feast the heroes for their discovery of the 
new world. I have often referred to that immense 
poetical fresco, without its equal in literature, which 
stands to the gardens of Armida as Nature to enchant- 
ment. 

I will read only the beginning of it: 


“From far they saw (the Portugese heroes) the cool and beautiful 
isle which Venus was pushing to them through the waters, as the 
wind pushes the white sail, so that they could not fail to see it. 
But as soon as she saw that they had sighted the island and were 
sailing to it, she made it firm and immovable, as Delos remained 
while Latona gave birth to Apollo and Diana. At once the prows cut 
the sea turned to where the coast forms a little bay, curved and 
quiet, whose white sands Cytherea paints with rosy shells. 

“In the lovely and delightful isle three beautiful hills were seen 
rising with a graceful pride and all enamelled with grass; clear 
fountains spring from the summit, covered with shining verdure, 
and the fugitive sonorous water glides softly amid the white 
pebbles. 

“The clear streams join together in a delightful valley that opens 
the hills and form a table as beautiful as could be imagined. A 
fine grove of trees hangs over it, as if to adorn themselves, by seeing 
their perfect image in the brilliant mirror. 

“A thousand trees grow to the skies with odoriferous and fair 
fruits, like the orange which has the hue that Daphne had in her 
hair. 


And so on, in other stanzas, about the fruits. And 
then: 


20 


“The lovely and fine tapestry that covers the earth takes much 
of their beauty off the Achemenian ones, (the Persian), but renders 
sweeter the shady valley. Here the Cephisian flower (the nar- 
cissus) inclines its head over the serene and transparent pond, 
and blossoms the son and grandson of Cinyra’s (Adonis converted 
into the anemone) for whom thou, Paphian goddess, still sighest.” 


And after some more stanzas describing the flowers 
with those fine touches of legend, he brings forth the 
Nymphs: | 


“Tt was amid all this freshness that the second Argonauts left 
their ships for the woods where the beautiful goddesses allowed 
themselves to remain, as if they knew nothing, some playing sweet 
citharas, others harps or sonorous flutes, while others, with golden 
bows, feigned to follow animals they did not follow.” 


And then the chase of the Goddesses by the Discov- 
erers runs through more of twenty stanzas, the whole 
Canto Ninth being really given to the Isle of Love. It 
is a wonderful composition, of exquisite beauty in many 
of its details, in unsurpassed grandeur in its whole. It 
would be enough to characterize Camoens as the Poet 
cf Love, if he had written nothing else. I must add, it 
is as pure as a heavenly vision, the love in Poetry and 
Religion being purified of all earthly corruption, the 
Houris of the Mohammedan Paradise,the Valkyrs of 
the Valhalla, the Nymphs of the Isle of Love being so 
many allegories of glory, of hero-immortality. 

Camoens would not, however, have been the com- 
plete Poet of Love he was if the dying or dead Chivalry 
had no part in his Poem. It has, in the episode of 
twelve Portuguese knights, who went to England to 
fight a tournament for twelve wronged English ladies 
that had found no defenders among their own country- 
men. | ne 

I hope I have justified my view that Camoens’ great- 


21 


est source of inspiration was love. He accustomed 
himself to love, in love he transformed everything, and, 
when he ceased to care for women and absorbed him- 
self in the national Poem, his experiences made him 
give true life to every episode in which love played a 
part; he understood love as the controlling force of 
life as well as of Nature, the principal means of the 
Ideal, the source of all creation, love, but not its spurious 
homonyms, which he so strongly condemns in his Poem. 
The teaching of the Lustaps could be resumed in the 

lesson for men to defeat Death, quoting the verses of its 
opening stanzas: 

Aquelles que por obras valerosas 

Se vao da lei da morte libertando. 


“Those who by noble deeds are freeing themselves from the 
law of death. 


Or, as Sir Richard Fanshaw translated them into 
Elisabethan English: 


. . . and Those who by 
Their deeds at home left not their names defac’t. 


The Poem is thus a school of immortality; not of 
personal immortality only, of collective immortality, 
such as that of the unknown Discoverers and Conquer- 
ors, who surrounded Vasco da Gama, and of love aim- 
ing at its highest mark, that which makes the im- 
mortal ones. In everything he commends the high kind 
of love, as ‘‘the low enfeebles the strong.’’ 


Que um baixo amor os fortes enfraquece. 
IIT, 189) 


Speaking of the selection of Vasco da Gama and of 
his crew, he will say: 


22 


“They were rewarded by Manuel, so that they armed themselves 
with greater love, and were encouraged with high words for all 
labors that might come. So were collected together the Minyas to 
fight for the golden veil, in the fatidic galley, which dared, ad- 
venturous, to tempt the first the Euxine sea.” 


Fatidic, because the ship Argo was made from trees 
of the prophetic forest.of Dodona. 


“Assi foram os Minyas ajuntados 
Para que o veo dourado combatessem, 
Na fatidica nau, que ousou primeira 
Tentar o mar Euxino, aventureira.” 
IV; Sar 


Has this not the ring of the noblest human language, 
that in which love, duty and religion are made one? 

Gentlemen, I have finished my third call among 
American students as a Camonian pilgrim, and I can 
assure you that I do not feel at all ashamed of begging . 
for his glory. When I see his great Poem so com- 
pletely ignored as it is in foreign countries, I do not 
grieve for him. What does it matter to Antarés, or to 
Sirius, if they are not seen in all their grandeur by all 
men? A few telescopes turned on them suffice to their 
glory in our little planet. But Camoens has a greater 
solace than the admiration of the few. The Portuguese 
language will always be called ‘‘the language of Cam- 
oens,’’ while no poet in the world has more the devo- 
tion of his own people, nay, of all who speak his lan- 
guage, than he. No foreigner that would read of the 
national celebration of his third centenary, in 1880, 
both in Portugal and Brazil, would doubt that. Those 
were divine honors. Two nations could not have ren- 
dered them to a poet three centuries after his death if 
he had not left in the hearts and minds of all who speak 
his language an inspiration, a cohesive and elevating 


23 


impulse, which only true creators can kindle forever. 
Homer has no readers compared with the writers of the 
day, still we must not fear for him. 

There is now about forty years that I follow the 
march of literature, and its relative place in the world. 
seems to me to become each day smaller. This, we 
must remember, is no longer the Age of writing; it is 


> already the Age of typewriting. The Manuscript is 


dead. I doubt if the affinities of inspiration with the 
machine will ever be the same as with the pen. Allow 
me to express to you my whole faith. I do not believe 
that there is anywhere through heavens a register for . 
money deals, however great; but I believe there is one 
for intellectual creations, and that the work of Homer, 
Dante, Camoens, Shakespere, and their like, tran- 
scends the Earth. 


oh 
s 
; 
‘ 
MANNS 
a ACY \3 
/ U 


Bay 
\ , 


) 
‘\ 
san 


* 


AY eT ary 
Weim ee 8 eT 
Ths 





h 








NEL gu 


0112 0619518 


Gises 





